Forever 21 store helps Mall of America reposition anchor space

Forever 21 will gobble up a large block of empty space at the Mall of America when its new 80,000-square-foot store opens on Saturday.

The relocation represents a hefty expansion for the fashion retailer. The new Forever 21 store is more than five times the size of its original 15,000-square-foot store. Forever 21 will swap its previous location on the second level on the mall’s East Broadway corridor for a new first floor space near the southeast court.

The Forever 21 opening is a key step in repositioning a section of the Bloomington mall that has been relatively quiet since anchor Bloomingdale’s vacated its department store in March. The unveiling of the new store also showcases more than $30 million in common area upgrades, including renovation to the south and east corridors, as well as a renovation and expansion of the southeast court where the two avenues meet.

“One of the things that we are hoping to do in that area, besides making it bright and exciting, is to include some interactive digital technology that helps to drive traffic to that corner,” says Dan Jasper, a spokesman for the Mall of America.

Los Angeles-based Forever 21 is a hot concept in the fast fashion niche and is known for delivering the latest in trendy apparel, as well as creating fresh, energetic retail stores.

“Forever 21 has really taken some interesting spaces and made them unique and changed what we think of traditionally for retail malls,” says Tricia Pitchford, a senior director at Bloomington-based Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq.

In this case, Forever 21 is incorporating previously unused basement space to create a multi-level effect. Forever 21 also has locations at Rosedale Center in Roseville and Maplewood.

The fact that Forever 21 is significantly expanding its Mall of America store does not come as a huge surprise. The Mall of America is known for attracting flagship retail stores, notes Stefanie Meyer, a senior vice president and principal at Mid-America Real Estate Group in Minneapolis.

“Many tenants do better at the Mall of America compared to a typical regional mall because of the high traffic volume of people that go through there every day,” says Meyer.

The mall reportedly attracts some 35 million to 40 million visitors each year. “So, for Forever 21 to want to capture that audience is not surprising,” she adds.

More tenants on tap

Despite the size of the new Forever 21 store , the mall still has a significant chunk of the 210,000-square-foot former Bloomingdale’s space to fill — about 190,000 square feet. The mall took a small sliver of that space, about 6,000 square feet, to expand its southeast court. But when the mall incorporated some of the sub-level basement space into the Forever 21 renovation it ended up gaining 65,000 square feet of space.

Consolidation within the department store sector in recent years made it challenging to “re-tenant” the space to a single user. One of the few options available to the mall was to break up the large box into smaller “junior” boxes.

“They can’t get too small, because of the depth of the floor plate there,” says Meyer. Mall anchor stores are generally very deep spaces with limited frontage or direct access into the interior of the mall.

The mall intends to bring in four additional retailers to occupy the remaining space.

According to Jasper, the mall expects to name two new tenants in early 2013 with tentative opening dates around mid-2013. The mall hopes to name a third tenant later in 2013 with a store that will open before year-end. MOA is still working to identify a final tenant that will occupy space on the third floor.

“We are looking at international fast fashion tenants that will be exciting additions to the market,” says Jasper.

The mall has done a “great job of aligning their tenants that are similar in use in different quadrants of the mall,” says Pitchford. So the assumption with Forever 21 opening is that the rest of the space will be leased to similar tenants that cater more to the younger shopper in their teens and 20s, she adds.

The mall’s goal also is to attract tenants that are unique to Minnesota, says Meyer. “They are working with some national and international tenants to take that space,” she says.

Current occupancy at the mall, which spans 2.6 million square feet of gross leasable space, is about 95 percent. Mall of America also has a tenant lined up for the space that Forever 21 will be vacating and will be making that announcement in the near future, Jasper says.